About

Pedro Leite heads a team of 20 people at Marine Harvest ASA, a Norwegian seafood company. He was the first lawyer to be recruited in-house, where his role primarily involved tax law. During his time as vice president tax and legal he has managed to integrate two separate groups into one team, his first major task. ‘From a legal and tax perspective, this involved three headquarters, in which we had to merge two major companies. This required us to clean-up, optimise and integrate the two companies over several jurisdictions’. Leite acknowledges that maintaining professional relationships has proven challenging due to the handling of ongoing internal investigations. That, in conjunction with the challenges faced during a shift in the company’s activities from a pioneer to an industrialised role in the aquaculture sector, have proved difficult at times. When discussing industries he comments that the aquaculture industry is relatively new to increased regulator and legislator scrutiny in some jurisdictions. ‘Norway is now a specialist in this area of law, however in other jurisdictions, legislation and regulations are still being implemented and therefore can lead to jurisdictional issues’. More recently, Leite won a dispute against the tax authorities, which he said was ‘a personal win. It shows endurance and that we did not to give up’. Faced by many challenges Leite motivates his team through endurance and innovative solutions.